Bankroll: Three Most Important Rules

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If you’ve ever been involved in a retail business, you already know the three most important rules for that business: location, location, and location. While intended to be somewhat humorous, it also illustrates just how important a good location is to survival in the cutthroat world of retail sales. But were you aware that poker has its own version of that little piece of homespun wisdom?

How I came to learn of the three most important poker rules is a sad story, indeed; the main source of my education in this matter came from the fact that I broke all three of ’em. Once again, though, you can benefit from your ol’ Uncle Mike’s idiocy. So, now, without further delay, I am about to bestow my ageless wisdom upon you. Pencils ready, please.

The three most important rules for a poker player are: Bankroll. Bankroll. And bankroll.

What’s that? You already knew that? You already have an adequate bankroll, you say. Well, I’m here to tell you that it’s probably not as adequate as you believe it to be.

Mason Malmuth once wrote that, to play limit poker professionally, in addition to six months living expenses, you need a poker-only bankroll of 300 big bets. He’s probably right, if you play in a rock-tight Las Vegas game with a relatively low rake and regular players whose tendencies you know like your ATM pin number. In a $10/20 game like that, $6000 is probably plenty if you’re a winning player. But in the age of internet poker, where the supply of “any two will do” players is seemingly endless, and their runner-runner miracles seemingly just as endless, 300 big bets is a big fat joke.

Obviously, if you’re not playing professionally, and have another source of income, you can scale down your bankroll requirements accordingly. But even so, you still need a bigger bankroll for online poker than you did for the brick-and-mortar casino game, for the following reasons: a) you’re often playing more than one table at a time, sometimes as many as 4 or 5; b) your bankroll now has to include multi-table and single-table tournament buy-ins, if you choose to play them; and c) the variance (bankroll swings) you will experience due to the huge influx of inexperienced and/or bad players into online poker.

I don’t profess to have the magic number for bankroll size; I wish I did. But I strongly believe that, for online limit poker, a bankroll size of at least 600 big bets should be considered the minimum if you intend to play for your living, and I don’t think 1000 big bets is horrendously out of line, either. (If you intend to play no-limit or pot-limit poker for a living, that’s a subject for another column.)

I came by this belief in the most humbling way possible: I went broke. I kept an online bankroll of about 300 big bets. “I know that bankroll is important, but I’ve been winning online for five years; I don’t need any more than that; I’m invincible!” Well, 300 big bets turned out to be woefully inadequate when I found myself in the three-month losing streak from hell. My draws never hit; theirs always did. If I hit a set, they hit a bigger one. To quote my good friend Luckbucket, I was finding new ways to lose. Variance, in short, jumped up and bit me hard in the ass, as every experienced professional player I knew warned me it would. I began to doubt my skill, and began to notice my play deteriorating into a passive milksop calling-station mess. Which of course made me lose more. After painstaking analysis of my play via hand histories, and many hours talking it over with mentors, I pulled up my bootstraps and started playing my A-game once again, and started the slow but steady climb out of the pit of despair that is losing at poker. It was a humbling and very painful lesson, one that I don’t intend to require re-learning. Only after being staked by a gracious and supportive friend did I manage to find my way back to more fertile ground. I’m still not fully recovered, but when I get there (and I will), I will definitely err on the side of caution by keeping 1000 big bets in my various accounts. I don’t want another scar on my ass.

So, do yourself a favor: keep a truly adequate bankroll for online poker. When that monster bad swing hits, you’ll thank me for it.

And here’s a bonus: the fourth most important rule for a poker player: When players way, way more experienced than you tell you something? Pay attention, for God’s sake.

By Mike McManus (aka North Shore Mike) a poker player, and customer support manager for online card room Full Tilt Poker.com.

The Three Most Important Rules for a Poker Player